A Personal Video Recorder (PVR) system offers consumers a hard disk or a network-based video cassette recorder (VCR) that digitally records live television (TV) programs while offering the versatility of select playback and associated special features. Live sources for a PVR system include a live digital broadcast and a live analog broadcast.
The coordination between recording and playback of programming can result in a number of timing issues. For example, the PVR system may pause its playback for a significant duration upon receiving a substantial discontinuity in its received time references. In another example, playback and recording buffers can overflow or underflow during simultaneous playback and recording. In addition, it would be advantageous for smooth playback or for manipulating the content of the video stream if an efficient method and system were developed that could determine quickly where particular picture frames were located in memory.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.